Midnight on Marina Prime
by D-Scythe
Summary: On a frontier planet that is both sinister and beautiful, Confederate marine Battalion 420 could find its first mission to be its last. My first StarCraft fic! Please Review! Revised and better than ever!
1. Default Chapter

Hello StarCraft Category. I'm D-Scythe and I must admit that this is my first visit out of the Gundam Category. I hope you enjoy my little foray into your world. Any how, I don't own Star-Craft, it belongs to the lucky folks over at Blizzard Software. I also don't have any money, so suing me would be aggravating and pointless.

****

Midnight on Marina Prime

A battalion of marines was staked out high in the mountains. There were seven men on the perimeter, and fourteen more inside. Their mission was to hold down a pass that also served as a supply line. They were also to respond to any calls for help from nearby troops or supply trains.

The particular mountain that they had set up on for the night had no name. Very few things on frontier planets had names. Hell, even some of the planets didn't have names, just survey numbers. But Marina Prime did have a name, and a modest settlement on it's largest continent in the northern hemisphere. 

That settlement had stopped sending routine supply requisitions and reports nearly a month before. A survey team had been dispatched to the settlement to see what was the matter. They reported that nothing seemed particularly wrong with the settlement, there was just a disturbing lack of people. Any people, to be exact.

With the logistical equivalent of a bewildered shrug, the survey team had packed it's bags and blasted home towards more civilized (or densely populated, nothing in the Confederacy of Man was truly civilized) sectors of space. Whatever team of low level bureaucrats on Tarsonis had been given the task of finding out what had happened on Marina Prime was not content to leave it at that. They ordered a Contingent of Space Marines to Marina Minor with orders to search the planet for signs of the missing colonists. If that search was unsuccessful, they would be ordered into their drop-ships to make the agonizingly slow in-system crawl to Marina Prime.

Marina Minor was a little dust ball of a world, all ice and wind, and it was quickly apparent that none of the settlers were there. After a week on board cramped space cruisers, the contingent reached the settlement of Marina Major. Upon arriving, they noticed that something had indeed happened since the survey team had left. 

A rudimentary cross had been erected in the town square. A gaunt and naked man, terribly thin, with his flesh picked and gouged by the birds had been nailed to it. Propped against the bottom of the cross was a bit of pre-molded housing material, the kind common on frontier worlds, and a message had been gouged on it with a blunt object. 

FUCK THE CONFEDERACY! leave US ALONE! The bugs are Here!

The contingent leader sent word back to Tarsonis that they were going to put down a group of civil insurrectionists and promptly received the blessings of the bureaucrats to do so. The contingent consisted of five battalions, which were each given assignments. The 420th battalion, consisting entirely of new recruits, was given the duty of guarding the high pass on the nameless mountain.

The mountain was some seventy klicks (kilometers) west of the settlement, and a hundred some klicks north of the equator. Summer was in full swing, but it still became cold at night. One of Marina Prime's moons was nearly full, the other was waxing past its first quarter. A stream ran nearby and joined a spectacular set of falls a bit further down the mountain from the pass. Those falls fed into a gigantic and beautiful lake that glimmered far below in the moon-light.

At sunset, flocks of a strange, indigenous fish took flight in great diamond formations and soared into the darkening sky for a night's hunting.

The battalion's XO, a lieutenant commander named Ronny Cross leaned restlessly against his vulture command bike. The machine was shop-issue new, still smelling of the factory production floor. It's suspension had not yet settled and the synth-leather seat was still too tough and springy. Those flukes aside, there were few things in the universe that Ronny Cross loved more than that bike. He looked forward to breaking it in over long years of successful missions and promotions.

He allowed his gaze to wander across the perimeter his men had set, the men appeared awake and alert, guns at the ready, combat armor sealed. In the moon-light, the sentries looked like metallic reincarnations of stone hedge, a remaining memory from the long lost earth. He smiled at their readiness. Then he turned to regard the rest of his troops. They were sleeping in their shelters, their combat suits looming outside the entrances like abandoned locust shells.

Shrugging, Lieutenant commander Roger Cross gave his Vulture one last affectionate pat before turning to crawl into his own shelter for the night.

After a moment, Private Rat McGuiness spat the soggy cigarette stub he had had clenched in his teeth down the mountainside and began hitting pressure seal releases on his suit. The catches released with a hiss of hydraulics and after a minute, Rat was able to hunch down and withdraw from the back of his suit. 

He wandered around to the front and pulled his gauze rifle from the suits giant hand. The needle gun had two triggers, one huge one for use inside the suit, the other small and normal sized for human use. Outside of the suit, the gun was a strictly two-handed affair. 

Rat looped the strap around his shoulder and scrambled up to perch on the broad shoulders of his suit, resting his feet on the sloped helmet. Leisurely, he pulled out a second cancer stick and cupped his hand over the end to block the cool night breeze as he lit it. then he sat back and stared at the larger, full, moon and its ghostly reflection in the lake below.

"Nice night, eh?" A voice asked quietly behind him.

To his credit, Rat did not jump in surprise, which might very well have tossed him of his suit and, most likely, down the cliff and onto the pile of mossy rocks some ten meters below. Instead he merely nodded and said, "Evenin' Morty."

Morton Hoffman, a burley man suited in Fire-bat armor came around to stand beside Rat's suit. Inside, Rat was thinking how amazing it was that any of them could move so silently in such huge suits. He gave a mental shrug and wrote it off as the wonders of modern science.

Morty cleared his throat and popped up his visor, revealing his craggy face. "Cross will throw a shit fit if he sees you out of your suit on sentry duty."

Rat shrugged and took an extra long pull on the cigarette. He was only dressed in combat pants and a thing white shirt, and luxuriated in the way the cool wind sent goose-bumps rippling up and down his arms and back. "Cross went to bed. Besides, he can drive that brand new vulture of his that he's so damn proud of off this cliff for all I care."

Morty grinned and began releasing the catches on his own suit. "Good point man." A bout a minute later he was also perched on the back of his open suit. He dug in his pockets for a few minutes and then swore. "Shit man, can I get a smoke?"

Rat looked dubiously at the pack, "Dunno if you want 'em man, they're ration issue, taste like they were made out of wood chips and cat piss."

"Yeah, I know, come on, gimme one." 

Rat grinned again and tossed the pack of coffin nails over, Morty caught it deftly with a sheepish grin. He then rooted through his pockets again. Another sheepish grin. Rat watched it out of the corner of his eye and knew what was coming. 

"Hey man, got a light?"

"Fuck it Morty, you're the one who lugs a god-damn flame thrower around all day. Christ sakes, you got one right now!"

Morty shook his head. "I want to light a cigarette, not my god-damn face. Hell, you could use that rifle there to clean your boots in the morning, but I gets the feeling you'd miss your toes after a while."

Rat lobbed over the metal canister and Morty snatched it out of the air. They sat smoking and watching the moon for a minute. A diamond flock of fish sailed by overhead. Rat shook his head. "Flying fish, what a weird fucking planet."

"Yeah, weird shit. That aint all though."

Rat sat up a bit and threw away his cigarette. "Huh?"

"You know Doc right?"

"Communications kid, glasses, hacked into Cross's Vulture computer so that the welcome screen said 'fuck you' every time he turned it on for a week?"

Morty grinned. "That's the one. He's been on the radio post every day since we got here. Word on the horn is that 408th is into some real hard shit out west."

"They find our crucifying colonists?"

Morty shook his head, "Not the way they tell it. Bugs."

"Bugs?"

"Yeah, big fuckers too. There's a couple of drop ships coming planet side with goliaths."

"Bugs? That's Bullshit."

Morty shook his head earnestly. "No shit man."

Rat leaned back. "Goliaths huh?"

"No shitting."

Something large passed over the moon, both men looked up but it was gone. Rat blinked. "The fuck was that?"

Morty craned his neck uneasily, "Just a cloud, I guess."

"Big fucking cloud."

"Yeah, fast fucker too."

The night suddenly seemed ten degrees cooler, the wind laden with sinister intent. Rat shivered and sniffed. "Morty? You smell that?"

Morty nodded grimly and cast away his cigarette. "Yeah. Fuck, I don't like-" A snarling six-legged creature sailed into him and knocked him free from his fire bat suit. Thick crimson blood sprayed across the campsite. 

Rat threw down his gun and dropped down into his suit. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit!" Rat began jamming the seal closes frantically. The suit hummed sluggishly to life. Clamps hissed closed. Rat rolled and dove, sweeping up his gun and turning to face the creature. The red dot tracked across the campsite. There was an impression of movement, of teeth, of claws, and then.

Blinding pain.

Rat gaped down at his left side. The arm was gone. His eyes rolled back in shock, but he stim-packs in his suit's shoulder packs began to pump. The pain disappeared, so did Rat's pupils. The creature was like some sort of ferocious dog that had been skinned. The red dot tracked again and settled on the creature's abdomen. Rat's finger clamped down on the trigger like a vice. A burst of gauze needles. The needles sprayed outward in a sweeping arc, sawing the creature in half. Brown ichor spewed from the wound, the creature went down. Rat still hadn't let go of the trigger and needle rounds sprayed the campsite, puncturing shelters, destroying equipment, ripping into the hill side.

Now there were more. The other sentries were engaged as well. There was the sound of wings overhead, rat suddenly found himself drenched in a horrible, phosphorus, liquid that burned away at his armor. After a moment, the stim-packs could not block the horrible pain. A few minutes later, Rat felt no pain at all.

Lieutenant Commander Cross was not thinking very well. the screams and bursts of needle fire had ripped him from the peaceful realm of dreams, to the nightmares of reality. He pelted across the burning ground and punched the start up on his Vulture. Then he swung into the cockpit and jammed closed the armor hatch. A screen lit up in front of him and Cross barely noticed the smiley face with the words **FUCK YOU COMMANDER JACKASS** printed beneath it in bright and cheery letters. He punched a few buttons on his command board and all around him, in their shelters, men were being awakened by floods from their stim-packs.

But it was too late, the acid was raining freely from the winged creatures in the sky and the small creatures were swarming over the cliff side, washing over the perimeter sentries like a tide of teeth and claws. The sensors in the cockpit began to beep in panic, telling him that there was something wrong with the ground.

Cross kicked the bike to the left as a scythe tipped limb burst from the ground where he had been parked a moment before. A snarling visage erupted from the earth in a spray of soil and slime. Cross's fingers managed to find the firing controls, and a spread of plasma grenades soared out toward the burrowing monster. 

The grenades exploded, skin tore, organs punctured. The creature screamed, then wavered, then finally fell. Cross kicked the bike around again, now the whole clearing was on fire. Doc, no armor and his glasses glinting in the moonlight, obviously filled to the brim with stim-packs, leaped toward one of the smaller creatures with a hunting knife. The creature batted him down and tore open his chest.

Cross opened up with his repeater rifles, making no discrimination of targets, Doc had been the last of his soldiers alive, and he hadn't even had a fucking suit on. Plasma grenades soared into the fray, tossing dog-creatures every which way in different pieces.

He kicked in the accelerator and spun in an arc toward the edge of the cliff. He had meant to spin back and have a clear field of fire, but the suspension hadn't settled yet. The bike kicked to far to the right and the suspensor fields lost contact with the ground. The brand new bike sailed over the cliffs edge, making a slow graceful revolution.

Rat had gotten his wish.

The vulture hit the mossy rocks below and was transformed into a crumpled heap of neo-steel. Zerglings swarmed towards as the fuel cells ruptured, engulfing the monsters in plasma fire.

In a half demolished shelter amidst a field of burning green flame, panicked voices began to shout over the radio. "Battalion 420, do you copy? This is the 408th! Fuck! We need backup! Good God, 420! They're everywhere! Please! Jesus Christ! 420 where are you? 420 We need-" A final scream. Silence.

A new voice broke into the line. 

"420th Battalion, do you copy? Four-Two-Oh, do you copy? Be advised 420, there have been enemy movements detected in your area. Be on extra alert. 420? Four-Two-oh, do you copy?"

There was a sound of a far off explosion over the radio. The line cut off.

The clock on Doc's radio read 00:00.

The Zerg had control of Marina Prime.


	2. Better version

Well now, first things first. As always, I, D-scythe, have no ownership of the StarCraft license or universe. Secondly, this is not a new chapter and it is not a sequel. I have gone back over my story and rewritten it, so as to include the events that led the 420th Battalion to that lonely mountain top. I've also taken the time to correct some errors, such as XO Cross's changing first name. The reason I chose not to write a sequel to this story is the simple fact that, well, everyone died. I hope you all enjoy.

****

Midnight on Marina Prime

A drop ship rocked uncertainly between its retro rockets as it settled in for a landing. It finally found its balance and dropped the remaining meter into a rising cloud of dust. The thud of metal hitting tarmac echoed through the deserted streets. The drop ship hatch opened with a hiss and a thin man wearing a duster and holding a clip board stepped slowly onto the cracked landing field.

His heavy boots crunched through the blasted gravel and the warm wind whipped his brown hair across the top of his head. Red lenses shielded his eyes from the summer sun as it crept across the paler than normal blue sky. 

More footsteps followed him, these lighter. A prim looking woman with a somewhat mousy face and black hair drew shoulder to shoulder with him and tapped a stylus against her clipboard. She surveyed the desolate cluster of buildings and watched the heat waves shimmer from the packed dirt streets. "Well?" she mused, "I suppose we should log that we're here."

"Yeah," he muttered. "Log the fact that we're here and the fucking place is empty."

"We don't know that for sure. That's the reason we brought all the fancy equipment that's still in the drop ship."

He ignored her and flipped open a link up to the drop ship's log/transmitter. "This is Confederate survey team Delta 774, formally assigned to Mar Sara, currently operating on Marina Prime. Upon arrival and overview inspection, the primary and only settlement on this planet appears to be abandoned. Also, our ship received no response to any hails, routine landing or otherwise." He flipped the link shut and turned to his companion with a dry smile. "That enough jurisdiction bull shit to keep the bureaucrats happy?"

"Most likely, common, let's get the scanners out and working." She nodded back towards the drop ship, where the captain could be seen silhouetted in the hatchway."

He nodded. "Fine, but one thing."

She cocked an eyebrow and watched his red lenses glinting in the sun. "What's that John?"

"We're sleeping in the ship tonight."

Now she cocked her other eyebrow. "Less privacy."

"Too bad, this planet's giving me the creeps all ready. Besides, the Captain has his quarters and we have ours. If he can hear your head banging against the bulkhead, that's just too bad. And it's not like he hasn't heard it before on this trip."

She laughed and punched him lightly in the shoulder. "You've got such a way with words."

"Why you love me, eh Becka?" 

She leaned her head against his shoulder and began in a low voice. "It's that or the fact that you've got one hell of a-"

"Excuse me!" The captain came jogging across the fractured asphalt, looking pretty pissed. "Are you two going to get started? There's something messed up about this planet, and the sooner you two figure out for sure that everyone's gone, the sooner we get the hell of this planet."

John grinned at Becka, "Told you the place was weird, even astronaut boy here can feel it, and I be he spends as little time on the surface of planets as he can."

"Damn straight!" The captain shook his head. "I hate planets, out in space, you don't have to worry about local bugs in your boots and local animals raiding your cooler. Now come on and get the damn job done!"

"Right, let's go Becka."

* * *

Two hours and three types of searches later, one thing was obvious. 

The damn place was well and truly empty.

John walked out of the general store and waved to Becka as she emerged from the pre-molded shelter across the street. "Any signs?"

She shook here head in disgust. "Were there signs last time we searched these houses?"

"I found something interesting."

"Do tell."

"No guns."

She tapped her stylus against her clipboard. "Huh? What's that got to do with anything?"

"Oh come on," he prompted. "We _live_ on a frontier planet!"

She shook her head. "C'mon, get to the point."

"_Guns_, C'mon, we've all got them. None here. All gone. Funny they had time to get _every_ fire arm in the settlement, but didn't have time to finish the meals still on their plates."

"Fine, but can we use that in a report? Or for that matter, use it to get any idea of why there are suddenly a hundred and twenty colonists that are now quite conspicuously _gone_?"

"Nope."

"Then let's get the hell out of here."

* * *

With the logistical equivalent of a bewildered shrug, the survey team had packed it's bags and blasted home towards more civilized (or densely populated, nothing in the Confederacy of Man was truly civilized) sectors of space. Whatever team of low level bureaucrats on Tarsonis had been given the task of finding out what had happened on Marina Prime was not content to leave it at that. They ordered a Contingent of Space Marines to Marina Minor with orders to search the planet for signs of the missing colonists. If that search was unsuccessful, they would be ordered into their drop-ships to make the agonizingly slow in-system crawl to Marina Prime.

* * *

Contingent leader Frank Asondta surveyed the barren, blasted landscape of ice from behind his polarized visor. Wind swept viciously through the thin atmosphere. He shook his head and spoke into his comm link. "Captain, is there anything to indicate that our colonist friends might have had anything capable of getting them here in the first place, let alone surviving if they made it?"

"No sir," came the distorted reply.

"Fine, we do one scan. Then we leave. The trip across the system is going to be enough of a bitch as is. We might as well get on with it."

"Yes sir."

* * *

All was not as it had been when the survey team had left.

A rudimentary cross had been erected in the town square. A gaunt and naked man, terribly thin, with his flesh picked and gouged by the birds had been nailed to it. Propped against the bottom of the cross was a bit of pre-molded housing material, the kind common on frontier worlds, and a message had been gouged on it with a blunt object. 

FUCK THE CONFEDERACY! LEAVE US ALONE! THE BUGS ARE HERE!

The contingent leader sent word back to Tarsonis that they were going to put down a group of civil insurrectionists and promptly received the blessings of the bureaucrats to do so. The contingent consisted of five battalions, which were each given assignments. The 420th battalion, consisting entirely of new recruits, was given the duty of guarding the high pass on a nameless mountain. 

The battalion of marines was staked out high in the mountains. There were seven men on the perimeter, and fourteen more inside. Their mission was to hold down a pass that also served as a supply line. They were also to respond to any calls for help from nearby troops or supply trains.

The particular mountain that they had set up on for the night had no name. Very few things on frontier planets had names. Hell, even some of the planets didn't have names, just survey numbers. But Marina Prime did have a name, and more of a problem than anyone would have guessed from an abandoned town.

The mountain was some seventy klicks (kilometers) west of the settlement, and a hundred some klicks north of the equator. Summer was in full swing, but it still became cold at night. One of Marina Prime's moons was nearly full, the other was waxing past its first quarter. A stream ran nearby and joined a spectacular set of falls a bit further down the mountain from the pass. Those falls fed into a gigantic and beautiful lake that glimmered far below in the moon-light.

At sunset, flocks of a strange, indigenous fish took flight in great diamond formations and soared into the darkening sky for a night's hunting.

The battalion's XO, a lieutenant commander named Ronny Cross leaned restlessly against his vulture command bike. The machine was shop-issue new, still smelling of the factory production floor. It's suspension had not yet settled and the synth-leather seat was still too tough and springy. Those flukes aside, there were few things in the universe that Ronny Cross loved more than that bike. He looked forward to breaking it in over long years of successful missions and promotions.

He allowed his gaze to wander across the perimeter his men had set, the men appeared awake and alert, guns at the ready, combat armor sealed. In the moon-light, the sentries looked like metallic reincarnations of stone hedge, a remaining memory from the long lost earth. He smiled at their readiness. Then he turned to regard the rest of his troops. They were sleeping in their shelters, their combat suits looming outside the entrances like abandoned locust shells.

Shrugging, Lieutenant commander Ronny Cross gave his Vulture one last affectionate pat before turning to crawl into his own shelter for the night.

After a moment, Private Rat McGuiness spat the soggy cigarette stub he had had clenched in his teeth down the mountainside and began hitting pressure seal releases on his suit. The catches released with a hiss of hydraulics and after a minute, Rat was able to hunch down and withdraw from the back of his suit. 

He wandered around to the front and pulled his gauze rifle from the suits giant hand. The needle gun had two triggers, one huge one for use inside the suit, the other small and normal sized for human use. Outside of the suit, the gun was a strictly two-handed affair. 

Rat looped the strap around his shoulder and scrambled up to perch on the broad shoulders of his suit, resting his feet on the sloped helmet. Leisurely, he pulled out a second cancer stick and cupped his hand over the end to block the cool night breeze as he lit it. then he sat back and stared at the larger, full, moon and its ghostly reflection in the lake below.

"Nice night, eh?" A voice asked quietly behind him.

To his credit, Rat did not jump in surprise, which might very well have tossed him of his suit and, most likely, down the cliff and onto the pile of mossy rocks some ten meters below. Instead he merely nodded and said, "Evenin' Morty."

Morton Hoffman, a burley man suited in Fire-bat armor came around to stand beside Rat's suit. Inside, Rat was thinking how amazing it was that any of them could move so silently in such huge suits. He gave a mental shrug and wrote it off as the wonders of modern science.

Morty cleared his throat and popped up his visor, revealing his craggy face. "Cross will throw a shit fit if he sees you out of your suit on sentry duty."

Rat shrugged and took an extra long pull on the cigarette. He was only dressed in combat pants and a thing white shirt, and luxuriated in the way the cool wind sent goose-bumps rippling up and down his arms and back. "Cross went to bed. Besides, he can drive that brand new vulture of his that he's so damn proud of off this cliff for all I care."

Morty grinned and began releasing the catches on his own suit. "Good point man." A bout a minute later he was also perched on the back of his open suit. He dug in his pockets for a few minutes and then swore. "Shit man, can I get a smoke?"

Rat looked dubiously at the pack, "Dunno if you want 'em man, they're ration issue, taste like they were made out of wood chips and cat piss."

"Yeah, I know, come on, gimme one." 

Rat grinned again and tossed the pack of coffin nails over, Morty caught it deftly with a sheepish grin. He then rooted through his pockets again. Another sheepish grin. Rat watched it out of the corner of his eye and knew what was coming. 

"Hey man, got a light?"

"Fuck it Morty, you're the one who lugs a god-damn flame thrower around all day. Christ sakes, you got one right now!"

Morty shook his head. "I want to light a cigarette, not my god-damn face. Hell, you could use that rifle there to clean your boots in the morning, but I gets the feeling you'd miss your toes after a while."

Rat lobbed over the metal canister and Morty snatched it out of the air. They sat smoking and watching the moon for a minute. A diamond flock of fish sailed by overhead. Rat shook his head. "Flying fish, what a weird fucking planet."

"Yeah, weird shit. That aint all though."

Rat sat up a bit and threw away his cigarette. "Huh?"

"You know Doc right?"

"Communications kid, glasses, hacked into Cross's Vulture computer so that the welcome screen said 'fuck you' every time he turned it on for a week?"

Morty grinned. "That's the one. He's been on the radio post every day since we got here. Word on the horn is that 408th is into some real hard shit out west."

"They find our crucifying colonists?"

Morty shook his head, "Not the way they tell it. Bugs."

"Bugs?"

"Yeah, big fuckers too. There's a couple of drop ships coming planet side with goliaths."

"Bugs? That's Bullshit."

Morty shook his head earnestly. "No shit man."

Rat leaned back. "Goliaths huh?"

"No shitting."

Something large passed over the moon, both men looked up but it was gone. Rat blinked. "The fuck was that?"

Morty craned his neck uneasily, "Just a cloud, I guess."

"Big fucking cloud."

"Yeah, fast fucker too."

The night suddenly seemed ten degrees cooler, the wind laden with sinister intent. Rat shivered and sniffed. "Morty? You smell that?"

Morty nodded grimly and cast away his cigarette. "Yeah. Fuck, I don't like-" A snarling six-legged creature sailed into him and knocked him free from his fire bat suit. Thick crimson blood sprayed across the campsite. 

Rat threw down his gun and dropped down into his suit. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit!" Rat began jamming the seal closes frantically. The suit hummed sluggishly to life. Clamps hissed closed. Rat rolled and dove, sweeping up his gun and turning to face the creature. The red dot tracked across the campsite. There was an impression of movement, of teeth, of claws, and then.

Blinding pain.

Rat gaped down at his left side. The arm was gone. His eyes rolled back in shock, but he stim-packs in his suit's shoulder packs began to pump. The pain disappeared, so did Rat's pupils. The creature was like some sort of ferocious dog that had been skinned. The red dot tracked again and settled on the creature's abdomen. Rat's finger clamped down on the trigger like a vice. A burst of gauze needles. The needles sprayed outward in a sweeping arc, sawing the creature in half. Brown ichor spewed from the wound, the creature went down. Rat still hadn't let go of the trigger and needle rounds sprayed the campsite, puncturing shelters, destroying equipment, ripping into the hill side.

Now there were more. The other sentries were engaged as well. There was the sound of wings overhead, rat suddenly found himself drenched in a horrible, phosphorus, liquid that burned away at his armor. After a moment, the stim-packs could not block the horrible pain. A few minutes later, Rat felt no pain at all.

Lieutenant Commander Cross was not thinking very well. the screams and bursts of needle fire had ripped him from the peaceful realm of dreams, to the nightmares of reality. He pelted across the burning ground and punched the start up on his Vulture. Then he swung into the cockpit and jammed closed the armor hatch. A screen lit up in front of him and Cross barely noticed the smiley face with the words **FUCK YOU COMMANDER JACKASS** printed beneath it in bright and cheery letters. He punched a few buttons on his command board and all around him, in their shelters, men were being awakened by floods from their stim-packs.

But it was too late, the acid was raining freely from the winged creatures in the sky and the small creatures were swarming over the cliff side, washing over the perimeter sentries like a tide of teeth and claws. The sensors in the cockpit began to beep in panic, telling him that there was something wrong with the ground.

Cross kicked the bike to the left as a scythe tipped limb burst from the ground where he had been parked a moment before. A snarling visage erupted from the earth in a spray of soil and slime. Cross's fingers managed to find the firing controls, and a spread of plasma grenades soared out toward the burrowing monster. 

The grenades exploded, skin tore, organs punctured. The creature screamed, then wavered, then finally fell. Cross kicked the bike around again, now the whole clearing was on fire. Doc, no armor and his glasses glinting in the moonlight, obviously filled to the brim with stim-packs, leaped toward one of the smaller creatures with a hunting knife. The creature batted him down and tore open his chest.

Cross opened up with his repeater rifles, making no discrimination of targets, Doc had been the last of his soldiers alive, and he hadn't even had a fucking suit on. Plasma grenades soared into the fray, tossing dog-creatures every which way in different pieces.

He kicked in the accelerator and spun in an arc toward the edge of the cliff. He had meant to spin back and have a clear field of fire, but the suspension hadn't settled yet. The bike kicked to far to the right and the suspensor fields lost contact with the ground. The brand new bike sailed over the cliffs edge, making a slow graceful revolution.

Rat had gotten his wish.

The vulture hit the mossy rocks below and was transformed into a crumpled heap of neo-steel. Zerglings swarmed towards as the fuel cells ruptured, engulfing the monsters in plasma fire.

In a half demolished shelter amidst a field of burning green flame, panicked voices began to shout over the radio. "Battalion 420, do you copy? This is the 408th! Fuck! We need backup! Good God, 420! They're everywhere! Please! Jesus Christ! 420 where are you? 420 We need-" A final scream. Silence.

A new voice broke into the line. 

"420th Battalion, do you copy? Four-Two-Oh, do you copy? Be advised 420, there have been enemy movements detected in your area. Be on extra alert. 420? Four-Two-oh, do you copy?"

There was a sound of a far off explosion over the radio. The line cut off.

The clock on Doc's radio read 00:00.

The Zerg had control of Marina Prime.


End file.
